Young Indian Minds Should Be Tapped For Defence Startups: Nirmala Sitharaman

Young Indian Minds Should Be Tapped For Defence Startups: Nirmala Sitharaman

The Ministry of Defence should start a facilitation centre so that people with innovative minds are given opportunity to produce things, says the defence minister Nirmala Sithraman on Tuesday.

The minister said that one can sit with like minded people whether they are in uniform or are non uniform personnel but who can produce things that can be used by the services.

The Ministry of Defence should start a facilitation centre so that people with innovative minds are given opportunity to produce things, says the defence minister Nirmala Sithraman on Tuesday.

Addressing the media persons while launching `Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti’ in New Delhi, the defence minister urged the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to introspect to make themselves more nimble towards innovation.”

The minister said that one can sit with like minded people whether they are in uniform or are non uniform personnel but who can produce things that can be used by the services.

According to the minister young Indians from the Silicon Valley should be keen to start the initiative of starting some projects as start ups. “We want to break the barriers so that we benefit from the young minds. I want to see them doing for defence related activities.”

Defence is seen as an area where transparency is not seen when it comes to procurement. “That which has to be patented should be driven by necessity, besides necessity there is also a curious mind,” the minister said.

As has been reported by FE earlier, the mission has been launched in an effort to increase the filing of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) especially in designing in an effort to cut down the dependency on the foreign defence manufacturers for their technologies.

On Sunday, the Secretary Defence Production Ajay Kumar had told a select group of journalists that between April-Oct this year 204 new IPRs have been filed between. And had clarified that the Defence Production Units (DPSUs) 133 IPRs were filed till March 2018.

The Directororate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) is in charge of the designs received through the Transfer of Technology (ToT), and for the IPR the responsibility is with the Additional DGQA and then line cells have been created in the DPSUs and the Ordinance Factory Boards (OFBs).

The MoD has set a target of getting at least up to 1000 IPRs, and to help in this process there will be training cells at the Units (shop level), Factory level and at the Corporate level with an aim to creating new Ideas. These have been set up with the main aim of motivating the employees and to ensure that they know that their efforts and works are being recognised.

In an information sheet shared with the media, out of the 204 IPRs filed till now, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has filed the most with 63 IPRs followed by 37 by HAL, BEML 28 and OFBs 20.

Against the target of 1000 IPRs filed for 2018-19, BEL tops the list with 43, followed by state owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) at 37.